Big government tries to do too many complex things that it can’t do very well. In order to get the job done, government bureaucracies rely on unelected advisory groups from the private sector. For example, in Medicare and Medicaid, the government usually draws advisers from major hospitals and health-insurance companies. You can imagine the opportunities for cronyism and conflicts of interest such a scheme might create.

What makes the risk of corruption even greater is that many of the advisory groups the government puts together are relatively obscure.

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